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Simple Thai-inspired salad

This salad is the soup of my spring: mostly veggies, done in a large batch for multiple meals ready to eat. The recipe was posted by the friend of a friend who recently started blogging about food, and the version below shows my modifications.

Simple Thai-inspired Salad

large head Napa cabbage (wash, spin dry, and cut out white spine of leaves, then cut stacks of leaves into bite-size pieces)

cilantro leaves (as much as you want chopped and tossed with the cabbage)

four to six carrots, peeled and cut into matchsticks

two large red bell peppers, seeded and cut into matchsticks

two Persian cucumbers, sliced

two packages of firm organic tofu (press excess liquid from tofu, cube, and toss with light coating of vegetable oil and soy sauce; bake on a cookie sheet in 425F oven until tofu takes on a chewy texture)

The way I’ve been making it, the peanut sauce is too thick to drizzle over the salad and I end up adding it in dollops. This in no way diminishes the deliciousness of the salad, which unites warm and cool, nutty and tangy and salty and sweet, and chewy and crunchy. You may, in fact, want to make extra peanut sauce, in which case you should consult the original Have Some recipe and make your increases accordingly.

If you’ve been wondering about sprouted tofu, here’s a quick overview. If you store cooked rice in the refrigerator, stop. Refrigerators dry rice out, so leave the cooked rice in the rice cooker (unplugged) for up to two days.

The tofu definitely develops a chewy (meaty?) texture when baked as I describe. If I leave it unattended while baking, there are pieces that inevitably stick to the pan and get crispy. I would say the texture of the tofu is more toothy and chewy than deep fried tofu, and I don’t use much oil. You could experiment with cube size if you’re trying to achieve crispiness. I use a metal baking sheet.